Four inducted into Red Sox Hall of Fame

BOSTON — Although he is probably the smartest person in baseball, there is no chance Pedro Martinez will ever be commissioner, or even an executive.

He is too honest.

"I'm against seeing him leave," Martinez said of the departed Jon Lester. "I'm going to openly say that. I hate to see that Lester is gone. He is the right guy to have all the young pitchers around."

Martinez's current employers, the Red Sox, no doubt value his input but probably are not as happy about his candor.

That did not prevent them from honoring him here on Thursday as a member of the franchise's newest Red Sox Hall of Fame class. Martinez, Roger Clemens, Nomar Garciaparra and Joe Castiglione were all inducted on Thursday as one of the finest Hall groups in history.

Martinez was honored twice, actually, since his one-hit, 17-strikeout game at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 10, 1999, was recognized as a Red Sox "Great Moment."

Martinez won the American League Cy Young Award that year and it was one of the best seasons by a starting pitcher in recent decades. He was 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA, but as memorable as that season and that Sept. 10 game was, the most important performance of Martinez's Red Sox career was probably a relief outing in Game 5 of the AL Division Series at Cleveland.

Injured early in the series, Martinez came into an 8-8 game to begin the last of the fourth. Pitching in pain, he allowed no hits in the final six innings with Boston posting an 12-8 victory.

"When the Indians fans saw Pedro warming up in the bullpen," Castiglione remembered, "the whole ballpark went silent. They were defeated."

"In Cleveland, I put my career in jeopardy," Martinez said. "A lot of people don't realize how (injured) I was. After that, every shoulder problem I had developed after that."

Martinez was always supremely confident as a Red Sox pitcher and that sometimes got him in trouble. Jimy Williams put him in the bullpen for one scheduled start because he kept arriving late at the ballpark. His one-hitter in New York in '99 happened, in part, because pitching coach Joe Kerrigan got under his skin by scolding him for not coming to a pregame pitchers' meeting.

"I was cranky that day anyway," Martinez said, "and Joe Kerrigan put the final touches on it. I went out there mad."

Martinez's best performances in a Boston uniform always seemed to be on the road, but his fondest memory happened at Fenway, at the 1999 All-Star Game. That featured baseball's All-Century team and included an historic appearance by Ted Williams.

"I don't think we'll ever see an All-Star Game put together like that again," Martinez said.

Clemens went out after the Hall of Fame luncheon and threw batting practice to his sons. Before that, he contrasted today's pitching technology with that from the 1980s.

"I learned to pitch by watching," he said. "We didn't have video back then. We looked at some 8-by-10s of other pitchers."

Garciaparra is an analyst on the Dodgers TV network and said he is often asked if Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher he has ever seen. Garciaparra responds that he's seen Martinez in action, and he is still the best, although Kershaw is on his way to that level.

Castiglione has broadcast more Red Sox games than anybody else. If spring training is included, it's around 5,800 since he was hired in 1983. His first season was Carl Yastrzemski's last.

His most memorable moment was an obvious choice — the final out of the 2004 World Series, which ended with, "Can you believe it?" Castiglione had wondered what he might say when, or in those days "if" that moment happened, but his signature call was mostly a product of spontaneous emotion.

He was part of a lot of emotion, spontaneous and otherwise, on Thursday as the Sox recognized one of their most accomplished classes of Hall of Fame inductees.